


fratres in aeternum

by templemarker



Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 17:20:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/templemarker/pseuds/templemarker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thomas is a loyal and protective brother. To a fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fratres in aeternum

**Author's Note:**

  * For [moonlight69](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonlight69/gifts).



> Happy holidays dear recipient! I love writing Dresden, and it's always a trip to explore Thomas'...crazy, and the complicated, intense feelings he has towards his brother and his sisters. Thanks for the opportunity to contribute to the Dresden fandom!
> 
> This story contains spoilers for all works in the Dresden Files fiction canon, particularly including Cold Days. Do not read this unless you are okay with being spoiled for current canon! 
> 
> Thank you so much to my wonderful betas, who run with me on whatever crazy trip I end up taking.

Thomas knew about Harry long before he'd ever encountered him. He'd been desperate to know why his mother had left him, too young to understand what she had suffered. When he'd gotten old enough to understand his father's violent neglect, and his older sisters had grown up enough to care less about what he was doing, he got away from the cloister of the Wraiths. He'd found her, a boy-child in her arms, and tasted bitterness in his mouth with the flood of loss washing over him again, just as it had when he was four. 

He tried to put it somewhere deep inside of him, and learned to live with it crawling down the back of his spine, flashing to the forefront of his mind randomly and viciously. 

But he was a Wraith, and he had his family, the way that they were. He loved them, fiercely; he spent time with each of his sisters, sharing their secrets, defending them, needlessly, from men. They seemed to love him back, though it was often a distracted thing, preoccupied with parties and politics and the way they became...different, at some point. 

Then he became different too, and there was a careful, measured distance between them, but for Inari. He did his best to keep close to her, support her, fighting himself as much as anyone to be her brother and not the monster he saw every time he looked in the mirror. 

Years passed, and the fragile balance between fighting his own demon and fighting for his sisters tensed and strained but always survived. 

He'd never expected to meet his brother at a vampire party. 

If Thomas was honest with himself, which was hard for him on the best of days, he would admit that just the sight of Harry, the line of their mother's nose and the scent of the LeFay magic on him, triggered the same obsessive affection as with his sisters. In the time that passed between the start of St. Claire's downfall and the moment Thomas chose to enter his brother's life, begging a favor, Thomas learned Harry, observed him. Tried to figure out the kind of man that was their mother's other son. Slowly he felt himself shift, thinking of Harry less the reason their mother had left him and more someone Thomas wanted to know. 

He didn't think that favor would end with his little brother--who barely knew anything more about him other than Thomas was a vampire and worthless to his father--taking him in and sharing 900 square feet with him for the next four years. 

Thomas would protect his brother with the same loyalty and ferocity as any member of his family, as if he and Harry had never been separated for so much of their lives. Harry was his _brother_. 

And then Harry died. 

To say he took it badly would be unfairly kind to a man with an incubus demon burrowed deep inside his body. He blamed himself, and no one, not even his beloved Justine, could make him hear anything different. Thomas knew his personality flaws better than he'd ever cared too, and there was little reason to not simply drink his possible immortality away, feeding off the mailman more than anyone else, and barely at that. 

It was his fault. He'd given Harry his keys. That bullet was meant for him, not his fragile mortal of a brother. 

Thomas craved darkness, and it was easily gained. 

When Justine finally fought her way through to him, abjuring the protection from him they'd both gained so long ago, he ran away. He broke into the cold water of the lake, hearing her call him a coward from the boat. He managed to hide for a few weeks, until Lara found him and nearly picked him up and shook him. 

He met Justine in one of the interview rooms in one of Lara's office buildings. He stood in the far corner, as far away from the door as he could be, half-hidden behind the curtains hanging from the ceiling. 

She called his name softly, and then louder; her voice was commanding in a way that cut through to the heart of him, and he pressed his hands against the wall for strength. 

He was never strong enough to resist. 

Slowly she pulled him back from his grief and anger, just as he had once quieted the violent shift of emotions that had once stormed her brain. He never felt calm--after the skinwalker, he knew he could never be calm again--but he wasn't the waste of a person he so easily could be. 

And when he woke from his sleep on the _Water Beetle_ , still his place of refuge despite everything, to find some asshole wearing a glamor of his brother, he felt the rage crest over him again. 

"You can't be my brother," he said, the tent stake twisting in his hand. "My brother is dead. You know how I know?"

"Thomas," the man said, a man who looked like his brother but only barely smelled of the LeFay magic, instead radiating a morning's frost and the bright full winter's moon.

"Because my _brother_ would have contacted me," Thomas said, feeling his lip curl like the predator he was. "If he were alive, he would have gotten in _touch_ with me. He would have let me know."

His brother was alive, and Thomas wanted to scream into the night sky. He'd failed, twice over, by not protecting Harry, by not knowing he was returned to life. That Mab, that ice bitch, had protected his brother better than he had. 

Thomas was so fucking angry. So relieved. It took him some time to accept it, that not only was Harry alive and on yet another crazy ride, but that Harry wasn't going to tell him he'd come back, or that he was the Winter Knight

Thomas knew from internal demons. Harry should have trusted Thomas to accept all of him, the flaws and the heroism, the monster and the mage all at once. 

Thomas would spend the rest of his life showing Harry what it meant to him be a LeFay brother, even if they had to invent that meaning for themselves all over again. They were the only two people in the world who knew what it was like to have their mother tuck them in close, whisper "I love you" in a dozen different languages, place a kiss on the crown of their heads. They would always have that, no matter the differences between them. 

And nothing would happen to Harry again. Not as long as Thomas brought breath into his body. 

He protected his family, even from themselves.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is the phrase, "brothers for eternity," in Latin.
> 
> The lines of dialogue are adapted from "Cold Days."


End file.
